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A review by hrlukz
Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn
4.0
Lol let’s get EMOOOO.
I’ve read the Melrose books many times, but my Dad recently bought me a signed compilation of all five volumes with a lovely, insightful introduction by the one and only Zadie Smith. It made for such a nice (if chunky, bordering on 900 pages) addition to my bookshelf that today I thought I’d reread the first in the series, Never Mind.
In all sincerity, the Melrose books are probably the greatest « philosophical thrillers » I’ve ever read. By that I mean they’re so completely unputdownable that you sometimes forget how ludicrously, wickedly clever and insightful they are.
Their grimly hilarious reflections on love, power and coping have served me and countless others as far more than sardonic stories. Instead, they’re helpmates and companions to anyone living what feels to them like an utterly ridiculous life, a life of bizarreness that can only be caused by the vast, confusing contradictions that lay at the centre of it. It is this contradiction, this terror of « a fixed meaning » and our attempts to elude it that are one of the central themes of St Aubyn’s masterpieces.
The Melrose novels are not examples of dressed up, edgy cynicism. They’re guides to living both recklessly and hesitantly, selfishly and in complete service to others. They’re guides to reconciling, most often failingly, what feel like the sweeping dissensions in the hearts of those of us whose plans to CHANGE, to GET BETTER are more often than not blown off kilter, seemingly to the complete expectation of those around us.
It is interesting that such a sly pessimism can only resonate in its full force with the most unwillingly optimistic of us. This is what makes the Melrose novels a source of cynical courage and understanding for all types of troubled thoughts. They offer complex but palatable ruminations on what it means to live a life full of rage, defined and created by rage, and yet so very full of anti-anger; full of forgiveness, but also of sullen bitterness that you can’t leave behind. The Melrose novels explain, at their core, what it is to feel constantly overshadowed by events that define you, and that, perhaps especially because people insist they do not define you, or need not define you, are events from which you can never move on.
Patrick’s (and thus St Aubyn’s) battle to « come to terms with » his rape(s) (for it really is his) is a war that spans his whole life. It is a love letter to those whose greatest obstacle is their own head. Because it simply isn’t a matter of « getting over it » for Patrick Melrose or for Edward St Aubyn, and this character study is one of epic proportions, a study I can explain as a sort of illogical Schopenhauer, a chaotic Rambam, an unloving, nihilistic Gibran. It is a damning condemnation of a stifling upper class society, whose only recollection of the real world that most of us experience is its lack of opportunities for a mind as boundless and an intellect as incredible and intriguing as Patrick’s.
I simply cannot recommend these novels enough.
I’ve read the Melrose books many times, but my Dad recently bought me a signed compilation of all five volumes with a lovely, insightful introduction by the one and only Zadie Smith. It made for such a nice (if chunky, bordering on 900 pages) addition to my bookshelf that today I thought I’d reread the first in the series, Never Mind.
In all sincerity, the Melrose books are probably the greatest « philosophical thrillers » I’ve ever read. By that I mean they’re so completely unputdownable that you sometimes forget how ludicrously, wickedly clever and insightful they are.
Their grimly hilarious reflections on love, power and coping have served me and countless others as far more than sardonic stories. Instead, they’re helpmates and companions to anyone living what feels to them like an utterly ridiculous life, a life of bizarreness that can only be caused by the vast, confusing contradictions that lay at the centre of it. It is this contradiction, this terror of « a fixed meaning » and our attempts to elude it that are one of the central themes of St Aubyn’s masterpieces.
The Melrose novels are not examples of dressed up, edgy cynicism. They’re guides to living both recklessly and hesitantly, selfishly and in complete service to others. They’re guides to reconciling, most often failingly, what feel like the sweeping dissensions in the hearts of those of us whose plans to CHANGE, to GET BETTER are more often than not blown off kilter, seemingly to the complete expectation of those around us.
It is interesting that such a sly pessimism can only resonate in its full force with the most unwillingly optimistic of us. This is what makes the Melrose novels a source of cynical courage and understanding for all types of troubled thoughts. They offer complex but palatable ruminations on what it means to live a life full of rage, defined and created by rage, and yet so very full of anti-anger; full of forgiveness, but also of sullen bitterness that you can’t leave behind. The Melrose novels explain, at their core, what it is to feel constantly overshadowed by events that define you, and that, perhaps especially because people insist they do not define you, or need not define you, are events from which you can never move on.
Patrick’s (and thus St Aubyn’s) battle to « come to terms with » his rape(s) (for it really is his) is a war that spans his whole life. It is a love letter to those whose greatest obstacle is their own head. Because it simply isn’t a matter of « getting over it » for Patrick Melrose or for Edward St Aubyn, and this character study is one of epic proportions, a study I can explain as a sort of illogical Schopenhauer, a chaotic Rambam, an unloving, nihilistic Gibran. It is a damning condemnation of a stifling upper class society, whose only recollection of the real world that most of us experience is its lack of opportunities for a mind as boundless and an intellect as incredible and intriguing as Patrick’s.
I simply cannot recommend these novels enough.